Monday, October 29, 2018
624 - Sales Pitch
Spirituality Column #624
October 30, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Sales Pitch
By Bob Walters
Christians are promised persecution
and suffering – the Bible tells me so – yet preachers continually sell Jesus as
a real-time antidote to worldly problems.
Let’s
discuss that for a couple of minutes.
There are
two fairly obvious but not quite opposite ends of the modern American
evangelical spectrum at play – commonly, sadly, almost predominantly – that
really don’t have much to do with anything the Bible actually says. On the one hand, it is routinely implied that
if you are sitting in church your presence must indicate that your life is a
real mess. Why else would you go to
church if not to fix your problems? And
Jesus will fix them, right?
A down-the-road
cousin of that doctrine – another wrong shoe on the same false foot – is the
prosperity crowd: folks who have been in church for a while and crow about the
wonderfulness of their worldly lives since they found Jesus. They are rich, smart, good looking, and
healthy. You just have to pray right and
act right.
In the
first case we have Jesus as “Mr. Fix-it”; the identifier of that kind of faith
is your necessary misery. In the other, the identifier is the “Blessed!” license
plate frame on your Mercedes. Both are
false doctrinal flags of the same skewed orthodoxy: the focus is on the appetite-filled
worldly self, not the freeing, forgiving divine Jesus.
Another false yet common ecclesial gambit
is the doctrine of “nothing you are doing with your faith is quite right.” You don’t pray right, you don’t give right,
you don’t worship right, you don’t read the Bible right. “You’re a sinner condemned to Hell … and that’s the good news,” my
wry preacher friend Shane Fuller likes to say.
There is no comfort to be had in a life of faith in Jesus Christ,
because – these preachers constantly declare – there is always something you’re doing wrong. The identifier here is guilt.
Where we are confused is at the
intersection of our worldly wants and our divine needs. Your life is a mess? Find Jesus! You want wealth? Find Jesus! You found Jesus and are happy? You must be doing something wrong! Seriously…?
None of these describe my own
experience – I hope they don’t describe yours, either – but it’s no surprise
that the mysteries of the holy Jesus prompt folks to create hard-edged yet
woefully off-base, legalistic interpretations of what we are supposed to do
with love, joy, humility, and sacrifice all in the same basket. “Persecution and hardship” isn’t much of a
sales pitch. A loving God who says you
will suffer? Ick.
“I don’t want that God; that’s not fair! That’s not loving,” the world
proclaims.
For me, finding Jesus later in life
was like putting on a pair of track shoes.
I had been through plenty: some not as bad as it sounds and some worse
than you can imagine. But it is the
eternal trusting in Jesus that allows all the contradictions of this fallen
life – past and present – to coalesce into hope for the road ahead; whether in sickness or health; want or wealth; a mess or
blessed. Heaven is our divine need.
Run life’s race not out of despair,
greed, or guilt. Instead, buy into the
steadfast truth of God’s wisdom, righteousness, and compassion. Suffering in this life is because of a broken
world, not a broken God, and Jesus is one salesman you can always trust.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) embraces God’s mysteries, not life’s vagaries.